-Caveat Lector-
>From www.security-policy.org/papers/1999/99-D92.html
> Publications of the Center for Security Policy
> No. 99-D 92
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> DECISION BRIEF
> 30 August 1999
>
>
> 'Dueling Egos' Bad for U.S. Foreign Policy
>
> (Washington, D.C.): Just what we need: Competing, high-visibility trips overseas
> this week by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the newly installed U.S.
> Ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, apparently are but the
> latest round of an escalating personal rivalry. Unfortunately, the most serious
> damage likely to arise from these dueling egos may not be to either of their
> careers but to the Nation's foreign policy interests.
>
> According to a report in Saturday's New York Times, "the built in tensions
> [between the two] are rife," dating at least from the beginning of the second
> Clinton term when Holbrooke and Albright were in competition to succeed the
> hapless Warren Christopher. Mrs. Albright ultimately got the nod, thanks
> primarily to her gender, the close relationship she had cultivated with the
> First Lady and the cynical political make-over she had affected since 1994 when
> the Republicans took over the Congress -- transforming her public image from
> that of a lefty foreign policy advisor to Michael Dukakis and Fritz Mondale to a
> "hard liner" during her own tenure as America's representative at the UN.
>
> Holbrooke: Going for It
>
> Clearly, Holbrooke does not intend to accept second billing any more. As Mrs.
> Albright herself demonstrated, the United Nations post -- and the Cabinet rank
> that currently accompanies it -- offers a bully pulpit from which to garner
> international press attention by serving as one of, if not the, U.S.
> government's principal spokesmen on foreign policy matters. Holbrooke would love
> it if, before January 2001, he could displace Albright, whose high-handed and
> generally incompetent conduct has left her with few friends in senior
> Administration circles. Failing that, he evidently looks forward to becoming Al
> Gore's Secretary of State should the Veep's faltering campaign succeed next
> year.
>
> A conflict between two forceful personalities, while messy, is not necessarily a
> bad thing in fashioning U.S. security policy. This is particularly true if the
> contest permits the differences between robustly realistic policies and those
> favored by the professional diplomats to be put into sharp relief, (generally
> leading to the adoption of the former). The struggles between President Carter's
> National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance
> and those in President Reagan's Cabinet between Secretary of Defense Caspar
> Weinberger and Secretary of State George Schultz are cases in point.
>
> For such conflict to be constructive, however, at least one of the protagonists
> needs to be a competent, principled security policy practitioner. The two rival
> road- shows underway this week -- Holbrooke's to the Balkans and Albright's to
> the Middle East and North Africa -- remind us that neither of these officials
> measure up to that high standard.
>
> The Record
>
> As President Clinton's Special Envoy, Amb. Holbrooke repeatedly negotiated with
> Slobodan Milosevic, thereby legitimating and helping to preserve in power the
> man who bears the greatest individual responsibility for the carnage and
> dislocation that have laid waste to much of the Balkan region. This legitimation
> reached its apogee in the accords Holbrooke famously brokered at Dayton, Ohio.
>
> It is now abundantly clear that that bit of diplomatic prestidigitation amounted
> to a cease-fire, not a genuine peace. There has been no reconstruction of the
> multi-ethnic society that existed in Bosnia before Serb "cleansing" began there.
> And billions of dollars in U.S. and other foreign aid that was supposed to be
> used for that purpose -- or at least for rebuilding the lives and property of
> Slobo's victims -- has been ripped off by corrupt officials, mafiosa and others.
>
>
> Now, Holbrooke is back in the Balkans, using the destruction and distress in
> Kosovo that predictably resulted from the decision to promote Milosevic as a
> "partner for peace" as a backdrop for his good cop/bad cop routine on the UN.
> With much-touted pronouncements to the effect that the Kosovo peacekeeping and
> nation-building will be a do-or-die test for the United Nations, he plays to the
> organization's many conservative critics.
>
> Yet, he knows full well that the best that can be hoped for is that the UN will
> muddle through there, squandering additional billions and leaving the area ripe
> for the next ethnic vendetta when the foreign hand-holding stops. Meanwhile,
> even if the organization fails this test, he will shortly go on-point in the Ted
> Turner-financed campaign to break loose more than a billion dollars the
> "deadbeat" U.S. is said to "owe" a still-largely-unreformed United Nations.
>
> Not to be outdone, Madeleine Albright will return to the scene of some of her
> most odious diplomatic crimes -- the Middle East. Specifically, her failed
> shuttle trips to the region, her petulant tirades and her heavy-handed threats
> have contributed to the toppling of a democratically elected government in
> Israel. She has also created heightened expectations throughout the Arab world
> that the U.S. will ensure that the new Israeli government surrenders
> strategically vital territory and otherwise takes ill-advised risks for "peace"
> or "security" or, at a minimum, for temporarily favorable press reviews.
>
> As with Holbrooke's romancing of Milosevic, Albright's pandering to the likes of
> Palestinian dictator Yasser Arafat and Syrian dictator Hafez Assad is doomed to
> fail. Can any good come from her refusal, for example, to repudiate Arafat's
> remarks in Ramallah on 4 August that "Some day soon, our children will be able
> to fly the Palestinian flag from the mosques and churches of Jerusalem. Allah
> willing, we will continue with our struggle, our jihad"? Can she constructively
> ignore, in her pursuit of a "breakthrough" peace agreement with Assad, his
> systematical violation of previous agreements -- to say nothing of his
> implication in: the murder of Americans, the sponsorship and promotion of
> international terrorism, the amassing of weapons of mass destruction, the
> cultivation of narcotics and their export to the United States and the
> counterfeiting of U.S. currency?
>
> The Bottom Line
>
> It is bad enough that American security policy is being left to the likes of
> Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke. The country's equities around the
> world could really suffer though if the rivalry between the two produces a
> competition to see who can garner the most publicity by securing empty
> agreements with disreputable foreign leaders. While egos, even dueling egos, are
> not unknown in Foggy Bottom, great care must be exercised to ensure that the
> national interest does not get caught in the crossfire.
>
> - 30 -
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> NOTE: The Center's publications are intended to invigorate and enrich the debate
> on foreign policy and defense issues. The views expressed do not necessarily
> reflect those of all members of the Center's Board of Advisors.
>
> Top of Page© 1988-1999, Center for Security Policy
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